With $200,000 for a feasibility study, the Maine Health Security Board is on its way to finding out whether Maine can lead the nation by creating a one-state universal single-payer health care system. The board expects to sign a contract with Mathematica Policy Research of Washington, D.C., within a week or so. A draft report will be due in 90 days, with the final report due 30 days after that, to be followed swiftly by campaigns by special interests to spin the report one way or the other.

No one knows, of course, how the study will turn out. Advocates hope it will show that Maine’s own universal plan would cost at least 5 percent less than the present total of all health care costs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the state employees plan, business firms’ payments, private health insurance, and individual out-of-pocket health expenses. Opponents hope the study will show that a state plan could never produce such savings.

The opponents have already shown their willingness to spend. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield fought hard to defeat a referendum last November in Portland on whether Maine should enact universal health care. Anthem contributed nearly $400,000 to a group called Citizens for Sensible Health Care Choices, which promoted doubts with television commercials reminiscent of the “Harry and Louise” ads that helped sink the Clinton health plan in 1994. Backers of the referendum spent less than $30,000 and won, 52-48 percent.

And in late June, opponents rounded up a dozen Canadians who needed medical treatments or drugs not readily available in Saint John, New Brunswick, and bused them to Bangor for help. Well-staged publicity about the incident would have been a blow against the Canadian system unless you read the interviews with the patients. They all said that despite specific problems they liked the Canadian plan and would not want to return to the former non-system. Only their complaints appeared in a Wall Street Journal column by Merrill Matthews Jr., who accompanied the Canadian visitors, representing a conservative think tank in Texas and something called the Council for Affordable Health Insurance in Alexandria, Va., a relentless opponent of single-payer health care in Canada, the United States and anywhere else. It is known as a political front for Golden Rule, a commercial health insurance company.

As Maine goes forward to explore the matter, it should expect well-financed opposition from organizations including the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas outfit. Phrma, the trade association for the pharmaceutical industry, is already suing the Maine Department of Human Services over the plan to get cheap drugs from Canada.

The feasibility study can help settle economic questions, but if the results are positive Mainers and ultimately the state Legislature will have to decide such questions as how to avoid waste and abuse and whether over-all savings can overcome the pain of higher taxes. There would still be a long road ahead. No need, though, to wait for a national solution to the health care crisis. After all, Canada’s plan started with a one-province plan in Saskatchewan.

The decisions will be difficult enough to decide, and the fewer special interest groups allowed to stir panic and fog up the issues, the better.